Guy Hands, the wealthy British financier, on Wednesday claimed that the top 10 large buy-out firms risked becoming the “unacceptable and unaccountable face of capitalism” and that the private equity industry had a fight on its hands to defend itself against its critics.

“There are 6bn of them out there and they are gunning for us,” he said at Frankfurt’s Super Return conference. “There are [only] 10,000 on our team.